dated for thirty one oscars most notably platoon born on the fourth of july j.f.k. and nixon his without a doubt one of the most controversial and influential filmmakers of our time and that's why i'm very pleased to be joined by producer director oliver stone thank you so much for joining me for having me it's nice to great pleasure so wall street is a film that challenge people to rethink human nature one of the most notable lines from the movie greed is good what was your original message about that line and how do you feel looking back twenty five years later at the relationship between wall street and our government. don't get me started you know of my father was in wall street so i grew up republican conservative in new york city and my life and underwent a lot of changes and by the time i was thirty five forty years old i was rethinking everything and i had a chance to go back and visits my dad's world of wall street from that i knew from the fifty's and sixty's but it completely changed in the eighty's and there was a new breed of banker investment trader shark that had come into the pool and

was devouring some of the smaller fish the emphasis being on money not on serving the client not on helping the economy gear is getting it all you know you could for yourself. and that gene. it was self evident there was a self destructive behavior about wall street the laws started to deregulate the computers brought on a new speed and volume so gordon gekko was a conglomeration of people that we met and michael douglas portrayed it was slick charming and apparently it attracted a lot of young people to go to work on wall street the film was a surprise hit surprise. you know because an arcane movie about business numbers that doesn't necessarily appeal to the movie going audience twenty years later i went back for money never sleeps the sequel to wall street goes out come out of jail michael douglas is out of jail and the wall street that i found was even.

crazier it was far greater than i had remembered in the eight years that i was stunned millions of dollars were now trains of dollars and again the banks that now the banks were deeply involved as you know in in trading and making profits for themselves as opposed to the economy or for their for the year for their clients so the world has got more topsy turvy and wall street more irresponsible my father would recognize. you know wall street could be considered an animal unto itself it has no loyalty to any country it only has a loyalty to capital and capital will move around the world as need be to make money so all of your decorated vietnam war veteran and some of your films born of the fourth of july platoon are among the most prolific antiwar films in american cinema what parallels do you draw to the afghanistan war which has now surpassed the longest american war unfortunate parallels because vietnam as a young soldier was very much they were not wanted we didn't feel wanted we felt

that they were taking us for our money that the vietnamese was happy to see yes because we meant prosperity we had good spitta real goods we had p.x. as we had cash and i think that there was a false loyalty and i think very much that afghanistan as in iraq the same story over and over where white blame go to intervene in third world nations. it's always a hoax but come on give us the money when the corruption is rampant and of course they have changed sides you know there's no there's no long term interest the vietnamese foreign minister said you know americans will leave yet no good no stays in afghanistan station afghanistan iraq stays we have not done well with interventions anywhere but we continue to be an empire you know we have eight hundred plus basis see some of the very secret and we we've created a huge infrastructure global infrastructure we're trying to be. the world's

policeman seems like american cinema has changed now a lot of films are just glorifying war i mean even even movies like hurt locker now zero dark thirty it just seems like there's no more critiquing the empire critiquing american foreign policy like your movie or why why are war movies more angry i think one of the essences of the first movie i did the platoon movie which took ten years to make there was a very eloquent section about. defoe willem dafoe asks why are we fighting this war i used to believe it i don't anymore i think that we all became those of us who thought about what we're doing and yet not began to doubt. and you're right about this not mindless triumphalism because the soviet empire fell i think about nine hundred ninety one and from that point on the united states started acting as if it was a unilateral player in the world and it was there was a in the movies you see a sergeant private was saving private ryan you see pearl harbor you see black hawk

down you see this is worship of the greatest generation as well as the technical logical all of our machinery our helicopters analogy you know i'm surprised in this hurt locker you say you see a lot of the there's no judgment about why we're in iraq and in this new movie i gather you know it is about our technological. slick this it's not about the morality of whether you're going into other countries to to kill or kidnap people do you think it's an element of self-censorship in a kind of post nine eleven world and cinematic self-censorship in the sense of self love i think i think that america. because of the the uncertainties of the ninety's the terrorism and so forth and the concept of globalization that we wanted badly on a capitalist. that we've lost sight of the home. millipede it takes

to be in our position we have to go we came out of world war two the richest most prosperous country in that. we built up a national security state over those seventy years and next to none on earth ever not the roman empire the british empire has ever been so big we don't even know how big. militarily but unfortunately the thought process that goes into studying history and knowing what how this came to being has been lost which is why your series is so crucial all of our little going to agree with you or the the blind worship of military patriotism i mean we all have a mother we have a sense of country and i believe in a military to defend your country but i don't believe your military to conquer the world right absolutely one of your most groundbreaking films my favorite. has been your portrayals of former presidents and j.f.k. . it's arguably the most accurate historical representation of what happened even

more so the more report i mean there's a scene in the film where joe passé is saying you know the mob have covered up the investigation and the mob have deterred really blocked this evidence i mean it seems like you know a lot of people think that the mob was complicit the assassination but really this movie kind of lays bare that there was some sort of criminal call that was in part responsible for j.f.k.'s assassination do you. described it at the time in one thousand and one as a counter myth sure the myth of the lord to hear. these are my conclusions based on a huge amount of research but we cannot ever prove anything in that movie practically because there's been so much blur you know the facts so much disappearance the autopsy among them the bullets the concept of fingerprints all the chain of evidence was lost the walls interrogation was lost if so it's a huge mess and out of that i do believe this is what happened or something similar to. you cannot kill the president like that it was

a complicated and bush and is done in a very methodical scientific way but. i've been fighting on that credit but i'm not saying that was a movie and i accepted that it was a movie but when we did this new thing this untold history of the united states this is a documentary this is ten hours and it's based on facts have been checked and checked again you can and you can dispute your interpretations and we go to the kennedy murder but the kennedy murder is part of a larger whole of what was kennedy doing i always ask that question of the movie what was kennedy's motive to kill him what what what did what was the difference between kennedy and johnson these are the key question i just can't help but think after seeing that movie where did this criminal component go if it really wasn't work no the in military industrial complex which we for which we think is involved in the murder that's still around very much so it's grown enormous we have another beast in the united states it's just we have the united states we have another

country living side by side with it it's called the pentagon and there's just no controlling it it's gone out of hand that's forty percent of our budget is goes to intelligence security and military. and there's also wall street which is another beast which has its own ethic so i think we'll see was that three countries living side by side tentacles reaching far cross the all over let's talk about nixon your portrayal of nixon was that he was a criminal i mean the cia is portrayed as this evil entity almost the supernatural entity or you know one point the movie the director of the cia is even threatening to kill nixon what do you say to people who say that you were too forgiving of bush and your movie w but i don't see that in nixon that the cia director tried to kill dick said we would that we hinted at there was a controversy between helms richard helms and nixon and part of the problems was to cuba papers and what you are it's a dirty story the cia was we nicknamed sometimes capitalisms invisible army goes back to one nine hundred. eighty seven and its creation in the anti-communist red

scare and the cia has misused its mandate for so long and still is in the in with a drone attack it has its own drones now and its targeted assassinations it's essentially i've always regarded the cia as a criminal organization of sort of like a mafia operating inside the us government scaring presidents because they have separate information and it's the same time they they've been battered they've lost the pentagon has taken over a lot of the old cia activities with and jaison joint special operations command it's become almost an equivalent to the cia and visible army and. you ask about w w it was a nightmare for me and personally as a documentary that we use we get to an untold history but mr bush jr was the ultimate everything that could go wrong could go wrong after two thousand it was him everything that happened to it two thousand and eleven was misinterpreted and rendered bigger and more hysterical but it's still he was part of

a process that had seemed to have been accelerating anyway the process of militarizing the plan bush did it badly obama does it a lot better. so the movie that you made that you say i was too sympathetic to i was never sympathetic to i was empathetic the difference is dramatist i am a drum it's in that case i'm not making a documentary i did a movie in which we walk in his shoes we we understand how this not a very deep thinking man who resembles harry truman in my mind a bit becomes president because he's the son of a president and his drives are very simple to me and i think there's a human in the film at the same time a little bit of heart quite a bit of heart but it's not because i like him. thank you for explaining i'll be right back much more with oscar winning to get all of our stone next.

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it it. and . hello.

hello. hello. the large. numbers are going to be like on the. so you guys just heard me talk to the prolific oliver stone about his film trajectory clear in some of the most important cinematic masterpieces of our time and now he and his story and peter cousin eric are seeking to push the envelope once again this time through a ten part showtime series called the untold history of the united states check it out. i mean i want to make it as exciting as a. history and we make it not only for me but we. always feel there's a disconnect about what's officially reported and what actually happens we can accept as something and to. sort of talk about the series and why it's so important

to revisit american history through an alternate lens i'm joined now by award winning film director oliver stone along with historian and professor at american university her cousin occur both the creators of the series and the authors of its accompanying book the untold history of the united states thank you so much for coming on and so i saw most of the series already it is mind blowing and i encourage everyone to check it out and i want to bring up the main pillar of the series specially being relevant with the anniversary of pearl harbor last week the dropping of two nuclear bombs on japan you know and growing up and my education that's the end of the chapter we drop the bombs the war was over we want to believe that's where i grew up that's the founding myth my children had three of them went to school went to high school and got the same story we had to bomb japan to finish the war they were fanatics and we had to save american lives at the idea was if we didn't get trapped atomic bomb the united states would have had to invade we would

have lost truman says in his memoir he was told a half million men would have died in the invasion and he had no choice but to drop it. that's not the end of the story for us that's the beginning of the story and it's the beginning also a mythology soviets are invading japan and that's the other side of the coin and the soviet invasion is what really terrifies the japanese and the bomb is being dropped to basically said the message to the russians in a new ballgame and a world war two we're no we're no longer allies i'm going to make a long story short but truman has a different strategy than roosevelt ever dreamed of and that's a strange disconnect we get into. too because with the wallace henry wallace was a vice president who got bumped off the ticket in forty four allowing for truman to get a great story that's why you see one history because the past is prologue we'll hear much about wallace. back up and explain i think we might have gone too quickly the

americans knew truman knew he said that the main reason he was going to potsdam was to make sure that stalin and the russians came into the war because the united states intelligence kept saying that the thing that the japanese dreaded the most if they would finally break the japanese back was the soviet entry into the war and the soviets entered the war on august ninth three days after the bombing of hiroshima and then united strops the second bomb before the soviets have a chance to a japanese have a chance to respond to the soviet invasion and what that's what made the difference the united states had already shown that it could wipe out japanese cities we've wiped out one hundred japanese cities with fire bombs but what changed the equation was the soviet entry which meant now the japanese military strategy was going to be bankrupt and their diplomatic strategy trying to get the soviets to get them better surrender terms was bankrupt that's what led to the end of the war but we knew that in advance that was going to have the effect and adopting the atomic bomb six out of seven of america's five star officers generals and admirals who got their fifth star during world war two said that the atomic bomb was

a marlie reprehensible militarily unnecessary and douglas macarthur general macarthur says that if we had told the japanese they could keep the emperor they would surrender to may we don't think that we think that's a bit of an exaggeration but the atomic bomb was not necessary and in fact it is so central to the cold war because it's sending a message to the soviet union and it's exactly how stalin interpreted it and stalin's generals interpreted it that they were really the target because the soviets knew better than anybody that the japanese were trying to surrender they're trying to surrender episodes to get them better surrender terms so for their mind it was not only gratuitous but it was a it was so good to it is that they said the united states. was ruthless enough to do anything to get its way and that this was a warning to the soviet union at that point i think another aspect of world war two history is the deaths another aspect of learning about world war two and history books is the proportionality you know the u.s. sacrifice so much i want to play a really important part of the series right now. it was over sixty to sixty five

million people lay dead including in this demitted twenty seven million soviets between ten and twenty million chinese six million jews over six million germans three million jewish pows. two and a half million japanese and one and a half million you can slow. austria britain france italy hungary remaining in the united states each county between a quarter million and a half million dead. the disproportionality this is stunning i really didn't even know the magnitude of those deaths before i saw that was really incredible i may completely shatters the misconceptions that we have growing up about most of all we all we all did i mean we had no america we still think america won the war d.-day and on june sixth forty four but the war was was well on its way to being what the soviets had broken the back of the german military in in russia and selling rather

that curse than they were moving at that time we led to the d.-day they were moving it through eastern europe the momentum it shifted the germans watched far more men on the eastern front six to one of them like that than they ever lost in the western front besides that it sets up a whole the whole concept of what world war two was because the we don't ever take into account the role of the british empire which controlled a large part of the world the richest resources prior to world war two so as to i mean i see your america stood like me i mean we were lost in this mythology from the beginning of our lives on which like the bomb was necessary we won world war two if you were the guy we have this right to police the world because we won that war on one of these above are true the only reason we have the right is because we have the might because we have the atomic bomb and we lead all the way through the entire arms race with the soviets we led by by sometimes by large margins sometimes by less margins but we maintained this grip of this. dominion over the

world and now we've moved into another era was space and cyber warfare we control call what they call full spectrum dominance if you like that terminology but essentially we are. a war machine and we have a huge investment in. and in an industry that we can't control. how he laid it out perfectly at the united states military family at the world we've got eight hundred to a thousand bases now it's got all these carrier groups. where weaponize in space russia and china have been the lead for trying to prevent the weaponization of space in the united states is ignoring that sometimes the vote in the united nations if everybody in the we're up against one against the united states we insist on weapon i space now we. sometimes israel hasn't even started actually thought the marshall islands over the united states basically stand alone on these

things and we're spreading this we spend so much on our military so much our base is forty percent of the budget but what upsets us the perhaps the most is we think that we have the psychological right as americans to do that. i think the whole debate is wrong between romney and obama between all this bipartisan foreign policy about how strong we should be and can we get stronger and stronger wiser than anybody else i had this mindset asking what is the path away from global control why can we not join the world and be a peaceful cooperative member of a. global perspective with a global history that we belong together as one planet especially with the climate threat is upon us so this is what's lacking in our schools and i think we have what they call american exceptionalism at the root of our heart we look at the flag and we think that's the greatest good ever existed that people are dying to come here

and that we are the greatest this is a very i think i mean healthy mind set the conventional wisdom and docketed. you know that obama sweetheart. because you think so doesn't nothing last in history that we know six empires fill in the twentieth century there's bound there were no . the empire can last except through we may maintain the military to a million which is probable because of our space age over the next twenty thirty years but think about the spiritual tyranny that's within well what happens to the citizenry when you dominate a world and what i think that henry wallace warned about in one nine hundred forty five and i think what he thinks if we treat the russians we treat the soviets so brutally now well we've got the bomb and we've got all the power how are they going to respond when they get upper hand we have to think about that same thing with the chinese the national intelligence council report that just came out this week says that by twenty thirty china is going to have the biggest economy in the world not the united states but china and china is going to be moving toward military parity

at some point this is our chance to get it right with china instead of this specific pivot that we have now hillary clinton wrote that article in foreign policy magazine titled america's pacific century that the united states is going to tip it toward asia now in order to control china if that's the mentality then when the chinese become more power with the united states how are they going to treat us i mean this is our chance actually to have a pivot a very good kind of pivot by creating a broader world community that includes the chinese rather than saying that they're somehow the enemy who we've got to contain or there is a broader breakdown it's not just china versus the u.s. i mean that's kind of an american fantasy about us like a game you know you think about regional powers at all come on and start to revolt against essentially a tyranny of will by the u.s. let's say brazil and india and turkey. and as well all these they have

these countries are rich in resources and they are regional powers to make sense for them to to resist and i think the u.s. feels that the more we can impose our will through our ways of doing business. that people will see that it's the right way doesn't work that way people don't have the same values that we. as we know from the george bush you're either with us or against. us. we grow up learning how to manage the empire without questioning whether or not we actually need one that's right and obama both ways are very good at it i think he's a bleriot and i'm sure there should be great when he looks in the camera he just i will keep this country strong we are going to be indispensable nation he repeats it . but it's a very good salesman and unfortunately we're out of time it was an absolute honor pleasure to have both of them on i really encourage i want to check out the untold history of the united states the groundbreaking work really important for everyone

to see it in this country thank you i appreciate it. wealthy british style. but on.

market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. to be soon which brightened. song from finest impressions. moves from stock totty dot com. over to the both of you know. where i am oh.

good speech. i wish i. could bomb a missile. come out of mine i'm a little. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it.